Letter 4

11/20/05

Hey everyone, its me again. I am now in Taji, or Tadji depending on who you ask, at the Phoenix Academy. Basically I'm in an Iraqi compound within a coalition compound. I'm finally not sleeping in a tent, instead we are sleeping in barracks that was built by the British in the 1920's ,the bunks are of cheap Iraqi construction and I'm surprised they can even hold our weight. I got a haircut today from an Iraqi who used a piece of string to pluck my eyebrows. I've never had my eyebrows trimmed before, especially not with a piece of string. He just kinda rolled it up and moved it down my brow entangling whatever hairs were in the way and then yanked them out. I don't remember asking for a eyebrow cut, but it was all free of charge. I also got to eat a mixture of western and Iraqi food, wasn't as good as Kuwait or Striker, it was about as good as Ft. Carson though. I had green bean stew with rice, flat bread, a hamburger and some fries. the fries were about the best thing, although the bread wasn't too bad, similiar to the foot bread I had in Afghanistan. We are just relaxing today since our flight was late getting in, we had one group show up at 4 am and we still have one group that didn't make it here last night, so they are stuck in Camp Striker until tonight. They have internet and phones here, not a lot of them but I should be able to get on here at least once a day or so. I've heard they have the European toilets here, the kind without a toilet, I haven't looked for them yet. The showers weren't to bad, they are single units with a lot of room in them, much more than what we have had, now if there was only hot water. I should be here about a week and then moving out again, I should find out soon where my team is going and how long we are going to be there, so that hopefully I can get a mailing address. Take care and I'll write more later.
love,
Billy